THE SECULAR CITY
Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective
By HARVEY COXPRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Harvey Cox
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15885-3
Contents
Introduction to the New Edition............................................xiThe Secular City: Twenty-Five Years Later..................................xliAcknowledgments............................................................lixINTRODUCTION: The Epoch of the Secular City................................1PART ONE: THE COMING OF THE SECULAR CITY...................................191 The Biblical Sources of Secularization...................................212 The Shape of the Secular City............................................463 The Style of the Secular City............................................724 The Secular City in Cross-Cultural Perspective...........................102PART TWO: THE CHURCH IN THE SECULAR CITY...................................1235 Toward a Theology of Social Change.......................................1256 The Church as God's Avant-garde..........................................1487 The Church as Cultural Exorcist..........................................177PART THREE: EXCURSIONS IN URBAN EXORCISM...................................1958 Work and Play in the Secular City........................................1979 Sex and Secularization...................................................22710 The Church and the Secular University...................................257PART FOUR: GOD AND THE SECULAR MAN.........................................28311 To Speak in a Secular Fashion of God....................................285Bibliography...............................................................321Index......................................................................329
CHAPTER 1
THE BIBLICAL SOURCES OF SECULARIZATION
We have defined secularization as the liberation of man fromreligious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attentionaway from other worlds and toward this one. But how didthis emancipation begin? What are its sources?
Secularization, as the German theologian Friedrich Gogartenonce remarked, is the legitimate consequence of theimpact of biblical faith on history. This is why it is no mereaccident that secularization arose first within the culture of theso-called Christian West, in the history within which the biblicalreligions have made their most telling impact. The riseof natural science, of democratic political institutions, and ofcultural pluralism— all developments we normally associatewith Western culture— can scarcely be understood without theoriginal impetus of the Bible. Even though the conscious connectionhas long since been lost sight of, the relationships arestill there. Cultural impulses continue to work long after theirsources have been forgotten.
In this chapter we wish to uncover these biblical sources ofsecularization once more. We do so not to elicit either gratitudeor rebuke for the Bible, depending on one's attitude towardsecularization, but rather to strengthen our capacity to dealwith secularization today by showing where it came from. Weshall do this by showing how three pivotal elements in the biblicalfaith have each given rise to one aspect of secularization.
Thus the disenchantment of nature begins with the Creation;the desacralization of politics with the Exodus; and the deconsecrationof values with the Sinai Covenant, especially with its prohibitionof idols. The discussion is designed to make amply clearthat, far from being something Christians should be against,secularization represents an authentic consequence of biblicalfaith. Rather than oppose it, the task of Christians should be tosupport and nourish it. But before we deal with these matterslet us look briefly at the word secularization itself.
SECULARIZATION VS. SECULARISM
The English word secular derives from the Latin word saeculum,meaning "this age." The history of this word's career inWestern thought is itself a parable of the degree to which thebiblical message has been misunderstood and misappropriatedover the years. Basically saeculum is one of the two Latin wordsdenoting "world" (the other is mundus). The very existence oftwo different Latin words for "world" foreshadowed serioustheological problems since it betrayed a certain dualism veryforeign to the Bible. The relationship between the two wordsis a complex one. Saeculum is a time-word, used frequently totranslate the Greek word aeon, which also means age or epoch.Mundus, on the other hand, is a space-word, used mostfrequently to translate the Greek word cosmos, meaning theuniverse or the created order. The ambiguity in the Latin revealsa deeper theological problem. It traces back to the crucialdifference between the Greek spatial view of reality and theHebrew time view. For the Greeks, the world was a place, alocation. Happenings of interest could occur within the world,but nothing significant ever happened to the world. There wasno such thing as world history. For the Hebrews, on the otherhand, the world was essentially history, a series of events beginningwith Creation and heading toward a Consummation.Thus the Greeks perceived existence spatially; the Hebrewsperceived it temporally. The tension between the two hasplagued Christian theology since its outset.
The impact of Hebrew faith on the Hellenistic world, mediatedthrough the early Christians, was to "temporalize" thedominant perception of reality. The world became history. Cosmosbecame aeon; mundus became saeculum. But the victory wasnot complete. The whole history of Christian theology fromthe apologists of the second century onward can be understoodin part as a continuing attempt to resist and dilute the radicalHebrew impulse, to absorb historical into spatial categories.There have always been counter-pressures and countertendencies.But only in our own time, thanks largely to themassive rediscovery of the Hebrew contribution through renewedOld Testament studies, have theologians begun to noticethe basic mistake they had been making. Only recently hasthe task of restoring the historical and temporal tenor to theologybegun in earnest. The word secular was an early victimof the Greek unwillingness to accept the full brunt of Hebrewhistoricity.
From the very beginning of its usage, secular denoted somethingvaguely inferior. It meant "this world" of change as opposedto the eternal "religious world." This usage already signifiesan ominous departure from biblical categories. It impliesthat the true religious world is timeless, changeless, and thussuperior to the "secular" world which was passing and transient.Thus the vocation of a "secular priest," one who servedin the "world," though technically on the same level, was actuallythought of as somehow less blessed than that of the "religious"priest who lived his life in the cloister, contemplatingthe changeless order of holy truth.
The medieval synthesis resolved the tension between Greekand Hebrew by making the spatial world the higher or religiousone and the changing world of history the lower or "secular"one. The biblical assertion that under God all of life isdrawn into history, that the cosmos is secularized, was temporarilylost sight of. In its first widespread usage, our wordsecularization had a very narrow and specialized meaning. Itdesignated the process by which a "religious" priest was transferredto a parish responsibility. He was secularized. Graduallythe meaning of the term was widened. When the separation ofpope and emperor became a fact of life in Christendom, thedivision between the spiritual and the secular assumed institutionalembodiment. Soon, the passing of certain responsibilitiesfrom ecclesiastical to political authorities was designated"secularization." This usage continued through the period ofthe Enlightenment and the French Revolution and obtainseven today in countries with a Catholic cultural heritage. Consequently,for example, when a school or hospital passes fromecclesiastical to public administration, the procedure is calledsecularization.
More recently, secularization has been used to describe aprocess on the cultural level which is parallel to the politicalone. It denotes the disappearance of religious determinationof the symbols of cultural integration. Cultural secularizationis an inevitable concomitant of a political and social secularization.Sometimes the one precedes the other, depending on thehistorical circumstances, but a wide imbalance between socialand cultural secularization will not persist very long. In theUnited States there has been a considerable degree of politicalsecularization for many years. The public schools are officiallysecular in the sense of being free from church control. At thesame time, the cultural secularization of America has comeabout more slowly. The Supreme Court decisions in the early1960s outlawing required prayers pointed up a disparity whichhad continued for some years. In Eastern Europe, on the otherhand, the historical process has been just the opposite. A radicallysecular culture has been imposed very quickly in Czechoslovakiaand Poland, but religious practices Americans wouldfind strikingly unconstitutional still obtain. In Czechoslovakia,for example, all priests and ministers are paid by the state. InPoland, in some instances religious instruction is still permittedin public schools. These discontinuities are due in part tothe disparate pace with which social and cultural secularizationoccur, a subject to which we shall return in a later chapter.
In any case, secularization as a descriptive term has a wideand inclusive significance. It appears in many different guises,depending on the religious and political history of the areaconcerned. But wherever it appears, it should be carefully distinguishedfrom secularism. Secularization implies a historicalprocess, almost certainly irreversible, in which society and cultureare delivered from tutelage to religious control and closedmetaphysical world-views. We have argued that it is basically aliberating development. Secularism, on the other hand, is thename for an ideology, a new closed world-view which functionsvery much like a new religion. While secularization findsits roots in the biblical faith itself and is to some extent anauthentic outcome of the impact of biblical faith on Westernhistory, this is not the case with secularism. Like any other ism,it menaces the openness and freedom secularization has produced;it must therefore be watched carefully to prevent itsbecoming the ideology of a new establishment. It must be especiallychecked where it pretends not to be a world-view butnonetheless seeks to impose its ideology through the organs ofthe state.
Secularization arises in large measure from the formativeinfluence of biblical faith on the world, an influence mediatedfirst by the Christian church and later by movements derivingpartly from it. What, then, are the elemental components ofsecularization and how did they originate?
DIMENSIONS OF SECULARIZATION
Creation as the Disenchantment of Nature
Presecular man lives in an enchanted forest. Its glens and grovesswarm with spirits. Its rocks and streams are alive with friendlyor fiendish demons. Reality is charged with a magical powerthat erupts here and there to threaten or benefit man. Properlymanaged and utilized, this invisible energy can be supplicated,warded off, or channeled. If real skill and esoteric knowledgeare called into play, the energies of the unseen world can beused against a family foe or an enemy of the tribe.
Anthropologists now concede that magic is not simply oneaspect of primitive life. It is a world-view. "Everything is alive,"reported a Pit Indian to his scholarly interrogator; "that's whatwe Indians believe. White people think everything is dead."Magic constitutes the style of presecular, tribal man. Furthermore,the bushes and beasts are his brothers. He perceives theworld as an inclusive cosmological system in which his ownkinship groups extend out to encompass every phenomenonin one way or another. Totemism, as the great anthropologistA. F. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) understood it, is a vast networkof kinship ties by which the creatures of the natural worldare incorporated into the basically familial organization of thetribe.
Many historians of religion believe that this magical worldview,although developed and organized in a very sophisticatedway, was never really broken through until the advent of biblicalfaith. The Sumerian, Egyptian, and Babylonian religioussystems, despite their fantastically complicated theologies andtheir enormously refined symbol systems, remained a form ofhigh magic, relying for their cohesion on the integral relationbetween man and the cosmos. Thus the annual flooding of theNile, the predictable revolution of the stars, and the commandingpresence of the sun and moon provided the framework bywhich the society was held together. Sun gods, river goddesses,and astral deities abounded. History was subsumed under cosmology,society under nature, time under space. Both god andman were part of nature.
This is why the Hebrew view of Creation signals such amarked departure. It separates nature from God and distinguishesman from nature. This is the beginning of the disenchantmentprocess. True, the Hebrews freely borrowed thematerial of the Creation story from their mythologically orientedneighbors of the ancient Near East. The themes andmotifs are in no sense original. But what the Hebrews did withthese myths, how they modified them, is the important thingto notice. Whereas in the Babylonian accounts, the sun, moon,and stars are semidivine beings, partaking the divinity of thegods themselves, their religious status is totally rejected by theHebrews. In Genesis, the sun and moon become creations ofYahweh, hung in the sky to light the world for man; they areneither gods nor semidivine beings. The stars have no controlover man's life. They too are made by Yahweh. None ofthe heavenly bodies can claim any right to religious awe orworship.
The Genesis account of Creation is really a form of "atheisticpropaganda." It is designed to teach the Hebrews that themagical vision, by which nature is seen as a semidivine force,has no basis in fact. Yahweh, the Creator, whose being is centeredoutside the natural process, who calls it into existenceand names its parts, allows man to perceive nature itself in amatter-of-fact way. It is true, as some modern writers havepointed out, that modern man's attitude toward disenchantednature has sometimes shown elements of vindictiveness. Like achild suddenly released from parental constraints, he takes savagepride in smashing nature and brutalizing it. This is perhapsa kind of revenge pressed by a former prisoner against his captor,but it is essentially childish and is unquestionably a passingphase. The mature secular man neither reverences nor ravagesnature. His task is to tend it and make use of it, to assume theresponsibility assigned to The Man, Adam.
Nor is man tied to nature by kinship ties. The lines of kinshipin the Bible are temporal, not spatial. Instead of reachingout to encompass kangaroos and totem shrubs, they reach backto the sagas of the fathers and forward to the fortunes of thechildren's children. The structure of Hebrew kinship is linear;it is historical, not cosmological. The Bible, with one or twoquaint exceptions (Eve's serpent and Balaam's ass), is devoid ofthe animal fables which abound in the legends and myths ofmagical peoples. Just after his creation man is given the crucialresponsibility of naming the animals. He is their master andcommander. It is his task to subdue the earth. Nature is neitherhis brother nor his god. As such it offers him no salvation.When he looks up to the hills, Hebrew man turns from themand asks where he can gain strength. The answer is: Not fromthe hills, but from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. Forthe Bible, neither man nor God is defined by his relationshipto nature. This not only frees both of them for history, it alsomakes nature itself available for man's use.
Max Weber has called this freeing of nature from its religiousovertones "disenchantment." The word is intended toconnote not disillusionment but matter-of-factness. Man becomesin effect a subject facing nature. He can still enjoy it anddelight in it, perhaps even more so since its terrors have beenreduced for him. But man is not a mere expression of nature,and nature is not a divine entity.
This disenchantment of the natural world provides an absoluteprecondition for the development of natural science. Sincewe have already shown that technopolis, today's technical city,would not have been possible without modern science, disenchantmentis also an essential precondition for modern urbanization.Science is basically a point of view. However highlydeveloped a culture's powers of observation, however refinedits equipment for measuring, no real scientific breakthrough ispossible until man can face the natural world unafraid. Wherevernature is perceived as an extension of himself or his group,or as the embodiment of the divine, science as we know it is precluded.This is evident in Assyrian culture, where an uncannyaccuracy in astronomical observation developed, but in whichthe heavenly bodies were still experienced as the determinantsof human destiny; hence no real scientific astronomy emerged.
It remains true in so-called underdeveloped cultures todaythat the mere introduction of modern technological devicesand procedures will never suffice to produce a scientific culture.Somehow nature must be disenchanted, which meansthe destruction of many traditional religions. This destructiontook place in the past century mainly under the auspices ofChristian missions. More recently it occurred as a result ofthe spread of Communist ideology. In this instance, Christianityand communism, despite their differences, played nearlyidentical roles in the removal of traditional religious restraintsto scientific and technological change. Both are historicallyoriented ways of perceiving natural reality. Both exorcise themagical demons and open nature for science. More recentlystill, less precise socialistic ideologies of a vague planned welfarestate have had the same influence. The disenchantmentof nature is one of the essential components of secularization.
(Continues...)Excerpted from THE SECULAR CITY by HARVEY COX. Copyright © 2013 Harvey Cox. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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